Re: Using Case to Show Tense

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 06:25:03 -0500, Edward Miller <sewerbird@...> wrote:

>  Because I like to overwork my affixes...;-D... it occurred to me to
> make the reflexive take the case, rather than do a double-case. How
> this is handled is likely going to be phonological, but, for sake of
> simplicity, we'll assume there are REF forms for each case.
>
> Thus:
>
> FUT REFL: He-a feed-n:REF. "He will feed himself."
>
> The reflexive points to the remaining argument and says what other
> role it satisfies, essentially.
I like this.  Double-case-marking is an ugly solution unless there's
already double-case in the language.

[Thinks out loud again, renaming p "ABS", n "NEU", and a "NOM".]

Borrowing further from Georgian, one could have genitives agree in
case with their heads (suffixaufnahme).  From this arrive new
double-cases GEN-ABS, GEN-NEU, GEN-NOM, GEN-INS, etc.  Then, make
patients in the antipassive take genitive instead of dative.  (Like in
the English antipassive "Whosoever eats of this bread...")  Then,
aspectual voice added to a true antipassive (the nose example)
wouldn't require any new suffixes, because gen-a already exists.

Then just find a use for an INS within a noun phrase.  My choice would
be how, by whom, or where the head is made.  Statue-NEU knife-INS-NEU
= "carved statue", leek-ABS fire-INS-ABS "grilled leeks", medicine-NOM
Sam-INS-NOM "medicine made by Sam."

Now all the required double-cases have other uses within the system.
It'd be clear whether Sam-INS-NOM is an instrumental adjunct or just a
"dummy reflexive" by whether or not (respectively) there exists any
other NOM in the sentence.

This system won't handle the cases of reflexivized intransitives, only
the cases of those passives/antipassives derived from them.  Not a big
problem, since the reflexivized intransitives weren't meaningful on
their own, really; only as a middle step in the derivation of perfect
passives, etc.

I'm not really suggesting you do this as an alternative, since I like
your system as it is.  Just thinking out loud.

> >Use the solution mentioned before: add a "dummy"
> > reflective affix to an intransitive verb to make it transitive -- say,
> > with an emphatic meaning -- and then add voice to *that*.
>
> Hrm... I don't think I want an emphatic meaning like that, unless
> "Reflective" and "Reflexive" are different? I thought they were the
> same, but if they are different, might be a good idea to have one be
> emphatic, and the other not.
>
> This might give different flavors to the verb... mmmmmmmmmm....
>
> Reflexive: He-a won-n:REFX it-DATIVE "He won himself it."
> Reflective: He-a won-nREFC it-DATIVE "He himself won it."
>
> ...or something like that :-)
"Reflective" was just a typo.  Mostly I was just trying to think of a
possible meaning for a reflexive affix added to an intransitive verb.
This isn't by itself a meaningful operation, so sometimes speakers
will use it for something else.  In Classical Nahuatl you find
something like this quite frequently to show respect, iirc; you add a
reflexive affix and then another affix to cancel it.  "Look how much I
respect you; I've just wasted two additional syllables of breath on
you with no reasonable grammatical function."  Something like that.
:-P

---------------------------------------

A benefit of your solution:

The above double-case idea doesn't allow one to keep sentences in
their mid-derivation "dummy reflexive" state, unless one allows
ugliness like NOM-ABS.  But the mid-derivation reflexive could be
useful: you could use *that* to double the number of available
aspects!  Reassign the antipassive to inceptive -- a better fit, by
analogy to accusative:future, anyway! -- and then use the reflexive
for progressive.  Below is a sample; on the left is the derivation
process the sentence undergoes and on the right an example
translation.

0                            =  I danced.
Refl                       = I was dancing.
Refl-Pass             = I had danced.
Refl-Pass-Refl    = I had been dancing.
Refl-Apass          = I began to dance.
Refl-Apass-Refl = I was beginning to dance.

0                    = I ate the cat.
Pass             = I had eaten the cat.
Pass-Refl    = I had been eating the cat.
Apass          = I began to eat the cat.
APass-Refl = I was beginning to eat the cat.

This gives you six aspects instead of three, without adding any new
mechanisms to the language.  The only tricky part is that you can't
REFL a transitive verb without changing its meaning, so first it has
to take *real* voice and then undergo the process for intransitives.

--
Patrick Littell
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Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00
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